When choosing a manufacturer to launch your medical device, there are a lot of things to consider and options to compare. Cost, quality and lead time usually lead the list. Which ones are most important for your device? In this blog I’m going to focus on an often overlooked attribute that should be a high priority in any launch plan.
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Many entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of ramping up medical device manufacturing in a small and controlled way – sort of a slow ramp. They often overestimate how quickly they’re going to require high volume and underestimate the value of post-release design changes and the effort that will be required in early launch.
The most common question supply chain professionals get from clients is “How can we reduce the cost of this project?” Cost reduction is always a challenge – especially in a low volume, complex manufacturing environment.
When most people think of Lean Manufacturing, they think of large, gleaming, gazillion square foot manufacturing spaces where every surface is clean, meticulously labelled and taped off. Happy workers reach for their conveniently placed tools on their shadow boards and work on mistake-proof assembly stations. They think of Toyota, or Boeing, or any manner of billion dollar businesses that have invested a lot into leaning out their operations. That can be quite intimidating for small companies on tight budgets with little headroom to get their Lean for small volume manufacturing journey started.
We asked our new product introduction (NPI) team to reflect on their collective experiences transferring medical devices from design to production. Their top tips for production readiness are listed below.
In a previous medical device company, I worked on a project where First-to-Market (FTM) was a deemed a priority for the company’s survival. To meet that highly compressed timeline, we decided to skip the 
On a quiet Monday morning, before the first cup of coffee has been poured, a faint sound can be heard coming from inside the organized chaos of an engineering lab. Tucked away in a corner, somewhere between an ever seemingly broken 3D printing machine and a box of orphaned circuit boards, a laptop screen glows blue in the dim light.
A couple of nights ago I watched 
